Suds Up : Surf City Moves Indoors and the Great Kahuna Cringes

Philip Ernst was the first to catch a wave in the finals of the surfing contest, and he rode it flawlessly, knees flexed, feet shifting beautifully on the white and red laminated surfboard, eyes fixed on the frothing wave as it rolled high and curled powerfully toward the beach.

Yet there was something a bit unusual about this surfing contest. It was nothing you could put your finger on, just a permeating feeling that something was not right.

Perhaps it was the fact that Ernst was wearing fine Italian calfskin tasseled loafers as he surfed.

Or that the only nearby water had ice in it and was smothering an ounce of fine scotch.

Maybe it was the realization that the surfing contest was being held indoors.

In a bar.

But whatever it was, this was no ordinary surf gathering of blonde beach rats and steel-bellied babes in bikinis.

Tuesday night’s event was billed as the Corporate Surf-Off. Held at a bar in the Warner Center Marriott Hotel, it attracted seven teams from local businesses. The surfing was done on a surfboard perched atop a joystick-type apparatus that registered the board’s movements and translated the signals into a moving picture on a TV monitor. The digital surfer was superimposed onto electronic waves and points were awarded based on the success of the ride.

Here’s a simpler explanation: People tried to balance themselves on a surfboard on the carpet in a bar and a computer showed them exactly how poorly they were doing.

And, after each failure, the screen would flash this message: “The Great Kahuna says better luck next time.”

The Great Kahuna, considered by Hawaiian surfers to be the god of the big waves, would intentionally run himself at full speed onto the nearest reef if he knew his name was being associated with this contraption.

But going in, there seems little chance this type of contest would attract any rocket scientists.

“I didn’t do too well,” Gary Hebdon said. “What your feet do and what the monitor shows don’t always seem to correlate.”

Hebdon is a rocket scientist.

Specifically, he is a project engineer for Rocketdyne, specializing in the testing and modification of propulsion systems. And his somewhat dismal showing on the surfboard proved that a thorough understanding of physics provides no free meal ticket on this baby.

“I keep forgetting which movement of the board does which thing to that machine,” Hebdon said.

The machine also showed no favoritism toward people who had real surfing experience. Ray Niesslein of the Brokers Investment Corp. of Calabasas said he has surfed the California coast for 15 years. He didn’t do much better than the rocket scientist.

“It’s not really anything like surfing,” he said. “It’s not really like anything. I’m 32 now, and I think I’m just too old to surf anymore.”

The carpet surfers came in hastily arranged team uniforms. A team from the Voit Companies appeared in sneakers, white socks, white tennis shorts, blue cotton dress shirts and red neckties. But even they were outdone by the Brokers Investment Corp. crew members, who wore black T-shirts with the company name on the back and the team motto--”It All Begins With Greed”--on the front.

Each team paid a $125 entry fee and all proceeds went to the Pacific Lodge Boys Home, a halfway house in Woodland Hills for juvenile delinquents.

The contest lasted for nearly four hours before a team from the Warner Center Club, a health spa, was crowned champion of the dry surfing festival.

Scott Reed of Northridge, who was brought in to judge the contest and award style points, is a veteran surfer who has competed in real surfing tournaments for the past 10 years. He watched the proceedings for two hours and, when the last digital wave had faded from the screen and the last cry of “carpet’s up” had rung through the bar, he offered this opinion:

“It seems like a nice game. But I’d keep most of these guys out of the water. There’d be a lot of rescues if this crowd hit the real surf.”